the secret to working less

Do you ever feel like you’re trapped on a never-ending hamster wheel?

Like your to-do list is never ending coupled with an overwhelming sense of “If I want my business to grow, I need to work more”

It’s one of most common problem plaguing the entrepreneurs I work with, they have this belief that for everything to go well, for their business to keep growing, they must work. All the time.

Quite frankly, it’s just not true.

Your business growth does not (or at least, should not) rely solely on your effort on a linear scale.

1 unit of your effort should not equal 1 unit of business growth.

Instead, 1 unit of your effort should equal 5-10-20+ units of business growth.

Your effort should have LEVERAGE..

And yes, everyone says this - but nobody tells you how to utilise it.

Well, don’t panic. I’m about too.

Leverage is simply getting more out than what you put in.

And so if you want to work less (but still grow your business) you must identify low leverage and high leverage tasks - and then focus solely on the high leverage.

The best way to do this is to list out every single task you do on a weekly basis and then reorder them in order of priority - with your most important task first and least important task last.

What you’ll find is that typically, only the top 3-5 tasks are ESSENTIAL.

Everything else is just burden you’ve picked up along the way, convincing yourself its important.

Your goal as the entrepreneur is to focus all your efforts on those 3-5 essential, high leverage tasks.

Everything else can (and should) be either dropped, automated or delegated, depending of it actually needs done or not.

The first time you do this it’ll feel uncomfortable - but after a week you’ll realise you really didn’t need to worry about all those other tasks.

The other way to use leverage is to identify bottlenecks.

Each system in your business has multiple components.

When you look at your business as a whole, as one system, the components of each of the systems within your business form the system of your entire business.

There will be one (or more) of these components which is performing at a level below the standards you’ve set for it (KPIs).

You should focus on solving the components further from their KPI or earliest in the system of your business - as these have the highest leverage and by solving these problems you will create the biggest gain.

If you want to work less but profit more, learn what to focus on to create outsized results for each unit of your effort.

— Ross

PS: Want to work with me 1-1 to regain control of your time and business? ​Click here